Under Two Flags by Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

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Under Two Flags: A Story of the Household and the Desert (Valancourt Classics)

Under Two Flags

Under Two Flags

UNDER TWO FLAGS: CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED AUGUST 1951 NUMBER 86

Under Two Flags: A Story of the Household and the Desert. Vol. III

Under Two Flags: A Story of the Household and the Desert. Vol. I

Under Two Flags [Christmas Summary Classics]

Under Two Flags

Under Two Flags

Under Two Flags

Cigarette; you are too generous ever to be vindictive."

"Pooh! Revenge is one's right."

"I doubt that. We are none of us good enough to claim it, at anyrate."

Cigarette shrugged her shoulders in silence; then, posing herself onthe wheel, she sprang from thence on to the back of her little mare,which she had brought up; having the reins in one of her hands and thewine-bowl in the other, and was fresh and bright after the night'srepose.

"I will ride with you, with my Spahis," she said, as a young queenmight have promised protection for her escort. He thanked her, andsank back among the straw, exhausted and worn out with pain and withlanguor; the weight that seemed to oppress his chest was almost ashard to bear as when the actual pressure of his dead charger's bodyhad been on him.

Yet, as he had said, it was but a bagatelle, beside the all but mortalwounds, the agonizing neuralgia, the prostrating fever, the torture ofbullet-torn nerves, and the scorching fire of inflamed sword-woundsthat had in their turn been borne by him in his twelve years ofAfrican service--things which, to men who have never suffered them,sound like the romanced horrors of an exaggerated imagination; yetthings which are daily and quietly borne, by such soldiers of theAlgerian Army, as the natural accompaniments of a military life--borne, too, in brave, simple, unconscious heroism by men who know wellthat the only reward for it will be their own self-contentment athaving been true to the traditions of their regiment.

Four other troopers were placed on the straw beside him, and the mule-carts with their mournful loads rolled slowly out of camp, eastwardtoward the quarters of the main army; the Spahis, glowing red againstthe sun, escorting them, with their darling in their midst; while fromtheir deep chests they shouted war songs in Sabir, with all the wildand riotous delight that the triumph of victory and the glow ofbloodshed roused in those who combined in them the fire of France andthe fanaticism of Islamism--an irresistible union.

Though the nights were now cold, and before long even the advent ofsnow might be looked for, the days were hot and even scorching still.Cigarette and her Spahis took no heed of it; they were desert born andbred; and she was well-nigh invulnerable to heat as any littlesalamander. But, although they were screened as well as they could beunder an improvised awning, the wounded men suffered terribly. Gnatsand mosquitoes and all the winged things of the African air tormentedthem, and tossing on the dry, hot straw they grew delirious; somefalling asleep and murmuring incoherently, others lying with wide-openeyes of half-senseless, straining misery. Cigarette had known well howit would be with them; she had accompanied such escorts many a time;and ever and again when they halted she dismounted and came to them,and mixed wine with some water that she had slung a barrel of to hersaddle, and gave it to them, and moved their bandages, and spoke tothem with a soft, caressing consolation that pacified them as if bysome magic. She had led them like a young lion on to the slaughter inthe past day; she soothed them now with a gentleness that the gentlestdaughter of the Church could not have surpassed.

The way was long; the road ill formed, leading for the most partacross a sear and desolate country, with nothing to relieve itsbarrenness except long stretches of the great spear-headed reeds. Atnoon the heat was intense; the little cavalcade halted for half anhour under the shade of some black, towering rocks which broke themonotony of the district, and commenced a more hilly and morepicturesque portion of the country. Cigarette came to the side of thetemporary ambulance in which Cecil was placed. He was asleep--sleepingfor once peacefully, with little trace of pain upon his features, ashe had slept the previous night. She saw that his face and chest hadnot been touched by the stinging insect-swarm; he was doubly screenedby a shirt hung above him dexterously on some bent sticks.

"Who has done that?" thought Cigarette. As she glanced round she saw--without any linen to cover him, Zackrist had reared himself up andleaned slightly forward over against his comrade. The shirt thatprotected Cecil was his; and on his own bare shoulders and mightychest the tiny armies of the flies and gnats were fastened, doingtheir will, uninterrupted.

As he caught her glance a sullen, ruddy glow of shame shown throughthe black, hard skin of his sun-burned visage--shame to which he hadbeen never touched when discovered in any one of his guilty andbarbarous actions.

"Dame!" he growled savagely--"he gave me his wine; one must dosomething in return. Not that I feel the insects--not I; my skin isleather, see you! they can't get through it; but his is white and soft--bah! like tissue-paper!"

"I see, Zackrist; you are right. A French soldier can never take akindness from an English fellow without outrunning him in generosity.Look--here is some drink for you."

She knew too well the strange nature with which she had to deal to saya syllable of praise to him for his self-devotion, or to appear to seethat, despite his boast of his leather skin, the stings of the cruel,winged tribes were drawing his blood and causing him alike pain andirritation which, under that sun, and added to the torment of hisgunshot-wound, were a martyrdom as great as the noblest saint everendured.

"Tiens--tiens! I did him wrong," murmured Cigarette. "That is whatthey are--the children of France--even when they are at their worst,like that devil, Zackrist. Who dare say they are not the heroes of theworld?"

And all through the march she gave Zackrist a double portion of herwater dashed with red wine, that was so welcome and so precious to theparched and aching throats; and all through the march Cecil layasleep, and the man who had thieved from him, the man whose soul wasstained with murder, and pillage, and rapine, sat erect beside him,letting the insects suck his veins and pierce his flesh.

It was only when they drew near the camp of the main army thatZackrist beat off the swarm and drew his old shirt over his head. "Youdo not want to say anything to him," he muttered to Cigarette. "I amof leather, you know; I have not felt it."

She nodded; she understood him. Yet his shoulders and his chest werewell-nigh flayed, despite the tough and horny skin of which he madehis boast.

"Dieu! we are droll!" mused Cigarette. "If we do a good thing, we hideit as if it were a bit of stolen meat, we are so afraid it should befound out; but, if they do one in the world there, they bray it at thetops of their voices from the houses' roofs, and run all down thestreets screaming about it, for fear it should be lost. Dieu! we aredroll!"

And she dashed the spurs into her mare and galloped off at the heightof her speed into camp--a very city of canvas, buzzing with the hum oflife, regulated with the marvelous skill and precision of Frenchwarfare, yet with the carelessness and the picturesqueness of thedesert-life pervading it.

"C'est la Cigarette!" ran from mouth to mouth, as the bay mare withher little Amazon rider, followed by the scarlet cloud of the Spahis,all ablaze like poppies in the sun, rose in sight, thrown out againstthe azure of the skies.

What she had done had been told long before by an orderly, riding hardin the early night to take the news of the battle; and the whole hostwas on watch for its darling--the savior of the honor of France. Likewave rushing on wave of some tempestuous ocean, the men swept out tomeet her in one great, surging tide of life, impetuous, passionate,idolatrous, exultant; with all the vivid ardor, all the uncontrolledemotion, of natures south-born, sun-nurtured. They broke away fromtheir midday rest as from their military toil, moved as by one swiftbreath of fire, and flung themselves out to meet her, the chorus of athousand voices ringing in deafening vivas to the skies. She wasenveloped in that vast sea of eager, furious lives; in that dizzytumult of vociferous cries and stretching hands and upturned faces. Asher soldiers had done the night before, so these did now--kissing herhands, her dress, her feet; sending her name in thunder through thesunlit air; lifting her from off her horse, and bearing her, in ascore of stalwart arms, triumphant in their midst.

She was theirs--their own--the Child of the Army, the Little One whosevoice above their dying brethren had the sweetness of an angel's song,and whose feet, in their hours of revelry, flew like the swift anddazzling flight of gold-winged orioles. And she had saved the honor oftheir Eagles; she had given to them and to France their god ofVictory. They loved her--O God, how they loved her!--with thatintense, breathless, intoxicating love of a multitude which, though itmay stone to-morrow what it adores to-day, has yet for those on whomit has once been given thus a power no other love can know--a passionunutterably sad, deliriously strong.

That passion moved her strangely.

As she looked down upon them, she knew that not one man breathed amongthat tumultuous mass but would have died that moment at her word; notone mouth moved among that countless host but breathed her name inpride, and love, and honor.

She might be a careless young coquette, a lawless little brigand, achild of sunny caprices, an elf of dauntless mischief; but she wasmore than these. The divine fire of genius had touched her, andCigarette would have perished for her country not less surely thanJeanne d'Arc. The holiness of an impersonal love, the glow of animperishable patriotism, the melancholy of a passionate pity for theconcrete and unnumbered sufferings of the people were in her,instinctive and inborn, as fragrance in the heart of flowers. And allthese together moved her now, and made her young face beautiful as shelooked down upon the crowding soldiery.

"It was nothing," she answered them--"it was nothing. It was forFrance."

For France! They shouted back the beloved word with tenfold joy; andthe great sea of life beneath her tossed to and fro in stormy triumph,in frantic paradise of victory, ringing her name with that of Franceupon the air, in thunder-shouts like spears of steel smiting onshields of bronze.

But she stretched her hand out, and swept it backward to the desert-border of the south with a gesture that had awe for them.

"Hush!" she said softly, with an accent in her voice that hushed theriot of their rejoicing homage till it lulled like the lull in astorm. "Give me no honor while they sleep yonder. With the dead liesthe glory!"

CHAPTER XXIX.

BY THE BIVOUAC FIRE.

"Hold!" cried Cigarette, interrupting herself in her chant in honor ofthe attributes of war, as the Tringlo's mules which she was driving,some three weeks after the fray of Zaraila, stopped, by sheer force ofold habit, in the middle of a green plateau on the outskirts of a camppitched in its center, and overlooked by brown, rugged scarps of rock,with stunted bushes on their summits, and here and there a maritimepine clinging to their naked slopes. At sight of the food-laden littlebeasts, and the well-known form behind them, the Tirailleurs,Indigenes, and the Zouaves, on whose side of the encampment she hadapproached, rushed toward her with frantic shouts, and wild delight,and vehement hurrahs in a tempest of vociferous welcome that mighthave stunned any ears less used, and startled any nerves less steeled,to military life than the Friend of the Flag. She signed back theshouting, disorderly crowd with her mule-whip, as superbly as thoughshe were a Marshal of France signing back a whole army's mutiny.

"What children you are! You push, and scramble, and tear, like a setof monkeys over a nut. Get out of my way, or I swear you shall none ofyou have so much as a morsel of black bread--do you hear!"

It was amusing to see how they minded her contemptuous orders; howthese black-bearded fire-eaters, the terror of the country, each oneof whom could have crushed her in his grasp as a wolf crushes a lamb,slunk back, silenced and obedient, before the imperious bidding of thelittle vivandiere. They had heeded her and let her rule over themalmost as much when she had been seven years old, and her curls, nowso dark, had been yellow as corn in the sun.

"Ouf!" growled only one insubordinate, "if you had been a day andnight eating nothing but a bit of moist clay, you might be hungrytoo."

The humiliated supplication of the reply appeased their autocraticsovereign. She nodded her head in assent.

"I know; I know. I have gone days on a handful of barley-ears. M. leColonel has his marmitons, and his fricassees, and his fine cuisinewhere he camps--ho!--but we soldiers have nothing but a hunch of bakedchaff. Well, we win battles on it!"

Which was one of the impromptu proverbs that Cigarette was wont tomanufacture and bring into her discourse with an air of authority asof one who quotes from profound scholastic lore. It was received witha howl of applause and of ratification. The entrails often gnaw withbitter pangs of famine in the Army of Algiers, and they knew well howsharp an edge hunger gives to the steel.

Nevertheless, the sullen, angry roar of famished men, that is soclosely, so terribly like the roar of wild beasts, did not cease.

"Where is Biribi?" they growled. "Biribi never keeps us waiting. Thoseare Biribi's beasts."

"Right," said Cigarette laconically, with a crack of her mule-whip onto the arm of a Zouave who was attempting to make free with her convoyand purloin a loaf off the load.

"Where is Biribi, then?" they roared in concert, a crowd of eager,wolfish, ravenous, impatient men, hungry as camp fasting could makethem, and half inclined even to tear their darling in pieces, sinceshe kept them thus from the stores.

Cigarette uncovered her head with a certain serious grace very rare inher.

"Biribi had made a good end."

Her assailants grew very quiet.

"Shot?" they asked briefly. Biribi was a Tringlo well beloved in allthe battalions.

Cigarette nodded, with a gesture outward to the solitary country. Shewas accustomed to these incidents of war; she thought of them no morethan a girl of civilized life thinks of the grouse or the partridgesthat are killed by her lovers and brothers.

"I was out yonder, two leagues or more away. I was riding; I was on myown horse; Etoile-Filante. Well I heard shots; of course I made forthe place by my ear. Before I got up I saw what was the mischief.There were the mules in a gorge, and Biribi in front of them,fighting, mon Dieu!--fighting like the devil--with three Arbis on him.They were trying to stop the convoys, and Biribi was beating them backwith all his might. I was too far off to do much good; but I shoutedand dashed down to them. The Arbis heard, Biribi heard; he flew on tothem like a tiger, that little Tringlo. It was wonderful! Two felldead under him; the third took fright and fled. When I got up, Biribilay above the dead brutes with a dozen wounds in him, if there wereone. He looked up, and knew me. 'Is it thee, Cigarette?' he asked; andhe could hardly speak for the blood in his throat. 'Do not wait withme; I am dead already. Drive the mules into camp as quick as thoucanst; the men will be thinking me late.' "

"Biribi was always bon enfant," muttered the listening throng; theyforgot their hunger as they heard.

"Ah! he thought more of you than you deserve, you jackals! I drew himaside into a hole in the rocks out of the heat. He was dead; he wasright. No man could live, slashed about like that. The Arbicos had seton him as he went singing along; if he would have given up the brutesand the stores, they would not have harmed him; but that was notBiribi. I did all I could for him. Dame! It was no good. He lay verystill for some minutes with his head on my lap; then he movedrestlessly and tossed about. 'They will think me so late--so late,' hemuttered; 'and they are famished by this. There is that letter, too,from his mother for Petit-Pot-de-Terre; there is all that news fromFrance; I have so much for them, and I shall be so late--so late!' Allhe thought was that he should be so late into camp. Well, it was allover very soon. I do not think he suffered; but he was so afraid youshould not have the food. I left him in the cave, and drove the muleson as he asked. Etoile-Filante had galloped away; have you seen himhome?"

There broke once more from the hearkening throng a roar that shook theechoes from the rocks; but it was not now the rage of famishedlonging, but the rage of the lust for vengeance, and the grief ofpassionate hearts blent together. Quick as the lightning flashes,their swords leaped from their scabbards and shook in the sun-lightedair.

"We will avenge him!" they shouted as with one throat, the hoarse cryrolling down the valley like a swell of thunder. If the bonds ofdiscipline had loosed them, they would have rushed forth on the searchand to the slaughter, forgetful of hunger, of heat, of sun-stroke, ofself-pity, of all things, save the dead Tringlo, whose only fear indeath had been lest they should want and suffer through him.

Their adjutants, alarmed by the tumult, hurried to the spot, fearing abread riot; for the camp was far from supplies, and had been illvictualed for several days. They asked rapidly what was the matter.

"Biribi had been killed," some soldier answered.

"Ah! and the bread not come."

"Yes, mon adjutant; the bread is there, and Cigarette too."

"There is no need for me, then," muttered the adjutant of Zouaves;"the Little One will keep order."

The Little One had before now quelled a mutiny with her pistol at theringleader's forehead, and her brave, scornful words scourging theinsubordinates for their dishonor to their arms, for their treason tothe Tricolor; and she was equal to the occasion now. She lifted herright hand.

"We will avenge him. That is of course. The Flag of France never hangsidly when there is a brave life's loss to be reckoned for; I shallknow again the cur that fled. Trust to me, and now be silent. You bawlout your oath of vengeance, oh, yes! But you bawled as loud a minuteago for bread. Biribi loved you better than you deserved. You deservenothing; you are hounds, ready to tear for offal to eat as to rend thefoe of your dead friend. Bah!"

The roar of the voices sank somewhat; Cigarette had sprung aloft on agun-carriage, and as the sun shone on her face it was brilliant withthe scorn that lashed them like whips.

"Sang de Dieu!" fiercely swore a Zouave. "Hounds, indeed! If it wereanyone but you! When one has had nothing but a snatch of raw bullock'smeat, and a taste of coffee black with mud, for a week through, is onea hound because one hungers?"

"No," said the orator from her elevation, and her eyes softenedwonderfully. In her heart she loved them so well, these wild, barbaricwarriors that she censured--"no, one is not a hound because onehungers; but one is not a soldier if one complains. Well! Biribi lovedyou; and I am here to do his will, to do his work. He came laden; hisback was loaded heavier than the mules'. To the front, all of you, asI name you! Petit-Pot-de-Terre, there is your old mother's letter. Ifshe knew as much as I do about you, scapegrace, she would nevertrouble herself whether you were dead or alive! Fagotin! Here is abundle of Paris newspapers for you; they are quite new--only ninemonths old! Potele! Some woman has sent you a love-scrawl and sometobacco; I suppose she knew your passions all ended in smoke! Rafle!Here is a little money come for you from France; it has not beenstolen, so it will have no spice for you! Racoleur! Here is a love-billet from some simpleton, with a knife as a souvenir; sharpen it onthe Arbicos. Poupard, Loup-terrible, Jean Pagnote, Pince-Maille, LouisMagot, Jules Goupil--here! There are your letters, your papers, yourcommissions. Biribi forgot nothing. As if you deserved to be workedfor, or thought of!"

With which reproach Cigarette relieved herself of the certain painthat was left on her by the death of Biribi; she always found that towork yourself into a passion with somebody is the very best way in theworld to banish an unwelcome emotion.

The men summoned by their camp-sobriquets, which were so familiar thatthey had, many of them, fairly forgotten their original names, ralliedaround her to receive the various packets with which a Tringlo iscommonly charged by friends in the towns, or relatives away in France,for the soldiers of African brigades, and which, as well as his convoyof food and his budget of news, render him so precious and so welcomean arrival at an encampment. The dead Biribi had been one of thelightest, brightest, cheeriest, and sauciest of the gay, kindly,industrious wanderers of his branch of the service; always willing tolead; always ready to help; always smoking, singing, laughing,chattering; treating his three mules as an indulgent mother herchildren; calling them Plick, Plack, et Plock, and thinking of Plick,Plack, et Plock far beyond himself at all times; a merry, busy,smiling, tender-hearted soul, who was always happy, trudging along thesunburned road, and caroling in his joyous voice chansonnettes andgaudrioles to the African flocks and herds, amid the Africansolitudes. If there were a man they loved, it was Biribi; Biribi,whose advent in camp had always been the signal for such laughter,such abundance, such showers of newspapers, such quantities ofintelligence from that France for tidings of which the hardest-featured veteran among them would ask with a pang at the heart, with athrill in the words. And they had sworn, and would keep what they hadsworn in bitter intensity, to avenge him to the uttermost point ofvengeance. Yet five minutes afterward when the provisions Plick,Plack, et Plock had brought were divided and given out, they wereshouting, eating, singing, devouring, with as eager a zest, and ashearty an enjoyment, as though Biribi were among them, and did not liedead two leagues away, with a dozen wounds slashed on his stiffeningframe.

"What heartless brutes! Are they always like that?" muttered agentleman painter who, traveling through the interior to get militarysketches, had obtained permission to take up quarters in the camp.

"If they were not like that they could not live a day," a voiceanswered curtly, behind him. "Do you know what this service is, thatyou venture to judge them? Men who meet death in the face every fiveminutes they breathe cannot afford the space for sentimentalism whichthose who saunter at ease and in safety can do. They laugh when we aredead, perhaps, but they are true as steel to us while we live--it isthe reverse of the practice of the world!"

The tourist started, turned, and looked aghast at the man who hadreproved him; it was a Chasseur d'Afrique, who, having spoken, wasalready some way onward, moving through the press and tumult of thecamp to his own regiment's portion of it.

Cigarette, standing by to see that Plick, Plack, and Plock wereproperty baited on the greenest forage to be found, heard, and hereyes flashed with a deep delight.

"Dame!" she thought, "I could not have answered better myself! He is atrue soldier, that." And she forgave Cecil all his sins to her withthe quick, impetuous, generous pardon of her warm little Gallic heart.

Cigarette believed that she could hate very bitterly; indeed, herpower of resentment she rated high among her grandest qualities. Hadthe little leopard been told that she could not resent to the deathwhat offended her, she would have held herself most infamouslyinsulted. Yet hate was, in truth, foreign to her frank, vivaciousnature; its deadliness never belonged to her, if its passion might;and at a trait akin to her, at a flash of sympathetic spirit in theobject of her displeasure, Cigarette changed from wrath to friendshipwith the true instinct of her little heart of gold. A heart which,though it had been tossed about on a sea of blood, and had never beengraven with so much as one tender word or one moral principle from theteachings of any creature, was still gold, despite all; no matter thebruises and the stains and the furnace-heats that had done their bestto harden it into bronze, to debase it into brass.

The camp was large, and a splendid picture of color, movement,picturesque combination, and wonderful light and shadow, as the sun-glow died out and the fires were lighted; for the nights were nowintensely cold--cold with the cutting, icy, withering bise, and clearabove as an Antarctic night, though the days were still hot and dry asflame.

On the left were the Tirailleurs, the Zouaves, the Zephyrs; on theright were the Cavalry and the Artillery; in the center of all was thetent of the chief. Everywhere, as evening fell, the red warmth offires rose; the caldron of soup or of coffee simmered, gypsy-like,above; the men lounged around, talking, laughing, cooking, story-telling at their pleasure; after the semi-starvation of the last week,the abundance of stores that had come in with other Tringlos besidespoor Biribi caused a universal hilarity. The glitter of accouterments,the contents of open knapsacks, the skins of animals just killed forthe marmite, the boughs of pines broken for firewood, strewed theground. Tethered horses, stands of arms, great drums and eagle-guidons, the looming darkness of huge cannon, the blackness, likedromedaries couched, of caissons and ambulance-wagons, the whitenessof the canvas tents, the incessant movement as the crowds of soldierystirred, and chattered, and worked, and sang--all these, on the greenlevel of the plain, framed in by the towering masses of the ruggedrocks, made a picture of marvelous effect and beauty.

Cecil, looking at it, thought so; though the harsh and bitter miserywhich he knew that glittering scene enfolded, and which he hadsuffered so many years himself--misery of hunger, of cold, of shot-wounds, of racking bodily pains--stole from it, in his eyes, thatpoetry and that picturesque brilliancy which it bore to the sight ofthe artist and the amateur. He knew the naked terrors of war, theagony, the travail, the icy chills, the sirocco heats, the grindingroutine, the pitiless chastisements of its reality; to those who do,it can no longer be a spectacle dressed in the splendid array ofromance. It is a fearful tragedy and farce woven close one in another;and its sole joy is in that blood-thirst which men so lustfully sharewith the tiger, and yet shudder from when they have sated it.

It was this knowledge of war, in its bitter and deadly truth, whichhad made him give the answer that had charmed Cigarette, to the casualvisitor of the encampment.

He sat now, having recovered from the effects of the day of Zaraila,within a little distance of the fire at which his men were stewingsome soup in the great simmering copper bowl. They had eaten nothingfor nigh a week, except some moldy bread, with the chance of a straycat or a shot bird to flavor it. Hunger was a common thorn in Algerianwarfare, since not even the matchless intendance of France couldregularly supply the troops across those interminable breadths of aridland, those sun-scorched plains, swept by Arab foragers.

"Beau Victor! You took their parts well," said a voice behind him, asCigarette vaulted over a pile of knapsacks and stood in the glow ofthe fire, with a little pipe in her pretty rosebud mouth and her capset daintily on one side of her curls.

He looked up, and smiled.

"Not so well as your own clever tongue would have done. Words are notmy weapons."

"No! You are as silent as the grave commonly; but when you do speak,you speak well," said the vivandiere condescendingly. "I hate silencemyself! Thoughts are very good grain, but if they are not whirledround, round, round, and winnowed and ground in the millstones oftalk, they keep little, hard, useless kernels, that not a soul candigest."

With which metaphor Cigarette blew a cloud of smoke into the nightair, looking the prettiest little genre picture in the ruddy firelightthat ever was painted on such a background of wavering shadow andundulating flame.

"Will your allegory hold good, petite?" smiled Cecil, thinking butlittle of his answer or of his companion, of whose service to him heremained utterly ignorant. "I fancy speech is the chaff mostgenerally, little better. So, they talk of you for the Cross? Nosoldier ever, of a surety, more greatly deserved it."

Her eyes gleamed with a luster like the African planets above her; herface caught all the fire, the light, the illumination of the flamesflashing near her.

"I did nothing," she said curtly. "Any man on the field would havedone the same."

"That is easy to say; not so easy to prove. In all great events theremay be the same strength, courage, and desire to act greatly in thosewho follow as in the one that leads; but it is only in that one thatthere is also the daring to originate, the genius to seize aright themoment of action and of success."

Cigarette was a little hero; she was, moreover, a little desperado;but she was a child in years and a woman at heart, valiant andruthless young soldier though she might be. She colored all over hermignonne face at the words of eulogy from this man whom she had toldherself she hated; her eyes filled; her lips trembled.

"It was nothing" she said softly, under her breath. "I would dietwenty deaths for France."

He looked at her, and for the hour understood her aright; he saw thatthere was the love for her country and the power of sacrifice in thisgay-plumaged and capricious little hawk of the desert.

"You have a noble nature, Cigarette," he said, with an earnest regardat her. "My poor child, if only----" He paused. He was thinking whatit was hard to say to her--if only the accidents of her life had beendifferent, what beauty, race, and genius might have been developed outof the untamed, untutored, inconsequent, but glorious nature of thechild-warrior.

As by a fate, unconsciously his pity embittered all the delight hispraise had given, and this implied regret for her stung her as therend of the spur a young Arab colt--stung her inwardly into cruelwrath and pain; outwardly into irony, deviltry, and contemptuousretort.

"Oh! Child, indeed! Was I a child the other day, my good fellow, whenI saved your squadron from being cut to pieces like grass with ascythe? As for nobility? Pouf! Not much of that in me. I love France--yes. A soldier always loves his country. She is so brave, too, and sofair, and so gay. Not like your Albion--if it is yours--who is a greatgobemouche stuffed full of cotton, steaming with fog, clutching goldwith one hand and the Bible with the other, that she may swell hermoney-bags, and seem a saint all the same; never laughing, neverlearning, always growling, always shuffling, who is like this spider--look!--a tiny body and huge, hairy legs--pull her legs, the Colonies,off, and leave her little English body, all shriveled and shrunkalone, and I should like to know what size she would be then, and howshe would manage to swell and to strut?"

Wherewith Cigarette tossed the spider into the air, with all thesupreme disdain she could impel into that gesture. Cigarette, thoughshe knew not her A B C, and could not have written her name to saveher own life, had a certain bright intelligence of her own that caughtup political tidings, and grasped at public subjects with a skilleducation alone will not bestow. One way and another she had heardmost of the floating opinions of the day, and stored them up in herfertile brain as a bee stores honey into his hive by much as nature-given and unconscious an instinct as the bee's own.

Cecil listened, amused.

"You little Anglophobist! You have the tongue of a Voltaire!"

"Voltaire?" questioned Cigarette. "Voltaire! Let me see. I know thatname. He was the man who championed Calas? Who had a fowl in the potfor every poor wretch that passed his house? Who was taken to thePantheon by the people in the Revolution?"

"Yes. And the man whom the wise world pretends still to call without aheart or a God!"

"Chut! He fed the poor, and freed the wronged. Better than patteringPaters, that!" said Cigarette, who thought a midnight mass at NotreDame or a Salutation at the Madeleine a pretty coup de theatre enough,but who had for all churches and creeds a serene contempt and a fiercedisdain. "Go to the grandams and the children!" she would say, with ashrug of her shoulders, to a priest, whenever one in Algiers or Parisattempted to reclaim her; and a son of the Order of Jesus, famed forpersuasiveness and eloquence, had been fairly beaten once when, in theardor of an African missionary, he had sought to argue with the littleBohemian of the Tricolor, and had had his logic rent in twain, and hisrhetoric scattered like dust, under the merciless home-thrusts and thesarcastic artillery of Cigarette's replies and inquiries.

"Hola!" she cried, leaving Voltaire for what took her fancy. "We talkof Albion--there is one of her sons. I detest your country, but I mustconfess she breeds uncommonly handsome men."

She was a dilettante in handsome men; she nodded her head now towhere, some yards off, at another of the camp-fires, stood, with someofficers of the regiment, one of the tourists; a very tall, very fairman, with a gallant bearing, and a tawny beard that glittered to goldin the light of the flames.

Cecil's glance followed Cigarette's. With a great cry he sprang to hisfeet and stood entranced, gazing at the stranger. She saw the startledamaze, the longing love, the agony of recognition, in his eyes; shesaw the impulse in him to spring forward, and the shuddering effortwith which the impulse was controlled. He turned to her almostfiercely.

"He must not see me! Keep him away--away, for God's sake!"

He could not have leave his men; he was fettered there where hissquadron was camped. He went as far as he could from the flame-lightinto the shadow, and thrust himself among the tethered horses.Cigarette asked nothing; comprehended at a glance with all the tact ofher nation; and sauntered forward to meet the officers of the regimentas they came up to the picket-fire with the yellow-haired Englishstranger. She knew how charming a picture there, with her handslightly resting on her hips, and her bright face danced on by theruddy fire-glow, she made; she knew she could hold thus the attentionof a whole brigade. The eyes of the stranger lighted on her, and hisvoice laughed in mellow music to his companions and ciceroni.

"Your intendance is perfect; your ambulance is perfect; your camp-cookery is perfect, messieurs; and here you have even perfect beauty,too! Truly, campaigning must be pleasant work in Algeria!"

Then he turned to her with compliments frank and gay, and full of adebonair grace that made her doubt he could be of Albion.

Retort was always ready to her; and she kept the circle of officers infull laughter round the fire with a shower of repartee that would havemade her fortune on the stage. And every now and then her glancewandered to the shadow where the horses were tethered.

Bah! why was she always doing him service? She could not have told.

Still she went on--and did it.

It was a fantastic picture by the bright scarlet light of the camp-fire, with the Little One in her full glory of mirth and mischief, andher circle of officers laughing on her with admiring eyes; nearest herthe towering height of the English stranger, with the gleam of theflame in the waves of his leonine beard.

From the darkness, where the scores of gray horses were tethered,Cecil's eyes were riveted on it. There were none near to see him; hadthere been, they would have seen an agony in his eyes that no physicalmisery, no torture of the battlefield, had brought there. His face wasbloodless, and his gaze strained through the gleam on to the fire-litgroup with a passionate intensity of yearning--he was well used topain, well used to self-control, well used to self-restraint, but forthe first time in his exile the bitterness of a struggle almostvanquished him. All the old love of his youth went out to this man, sonear to him, yet so hopelessly severed from him; looking on the faceof his friend, a violence of longing shook him. "O God, if I weredead!" he thought, "they might know then----"

He would have died gladly to have had that familiar hand once moretouch his; those familiar eyes once more look on him with thegenerous, tender trust of old.

His brain reeled, his thoughts grew blind, as he stood there among hishorses, with the stir and tumult of the bivouac about him. There wasnothing simpler, nothing less strange, than that an English soldiershould visit the Franco-Arab camp; but to him it seemed like aresurrection of the dead.

Whether it was a brief moment, or an hour through, that the circlestood about the great, black caldron that was swinging above theflames, he could not have told; to him it was an eternity. The echo ofthe mellow, ringing tones that he knew so well came to him from thedistance, till his heart seemed breaking with but one forbiddenlonging--to look once more in those brave eyes that made every cowardand liar quail, and say only, "I was guiltless."

It is bitter to know those whom we love dead; but it is more bitter tobe as dead to those who, once having loved us, have sunk our memorydeep beneath oblivion that is not the oblivion of the grave.

A while, and the group broke up and was scattered; the Englishtraveler throwing gold pieces by the score among the waiting troopers."A bientot!" they called to Cigarette, who nodded farewell to themwith a cigar in her mouth, and busied herself pouring some brandy intothe old copper caldron in which some black coffee and muddy water,three parts sand, was boiling. A few moments later, and they were outof sight among the confusion, the crowds, and the flickering shadowsof the camp. When they were quite gone, she came softly to him; shecould not see him well in the gloom, but she touched his hand.

"Dieu! how cold you are! He is gone."

He could not answer her to thank her, but he crushed in his thelittle, warm, brown palm. She felt a shiver shake his limbs.

"Is he your enemy?" she asked.

"No."

"What, then?"

"The man I love best on earth."

"Ah!" She had felt a surprise she had not spoke that he should fleethus from any foe. "He thinks you dead, then?"

"Yes."

"And must always think so?"

"Yes." He held her hand still, and his own wrung it hard--the grasp ofcomrade to comrade, not of man to woman. "Child, you are bold,generous, pitiful; for God's sake, get me sent out of this campto-night. I am powerless."

There was that in the accent which struck his listener to the heart.He was powerless, fettered hand and foot as though he were a prisoner;a night's absence, and he would be shot as a deserter. He had grownaccustomed to this rendering up of all his life to the rules ofothers; but now and then the galled spirit chafed, the netted stagstrained at the bonds.

"I will try," said Cigarette simply, without any of her audacity or ofher vanity in the answer. "Go you to the fire; you are cold."

"Are you sure he will not return?"

"Not he. They are gone to eat and drink; I go with them. What is ityou fear?"

"My own weakness."

She was silent. She could just watch his features by the dim light,and she saw his mouth quiver under the fullness of his beard. He feltthat if he looked again on the face of the man he loved he might bebroken into self-pity, and unloose his silence, and shatter all thework of so many years. He had been strong where men of harder fiberand less ductile temper might have been feeble; but he never thoughtthat he had been so; he only thought that he had acted on impulse, andhad remained true to his act through the mere instinct of honor--aninstinct inborn in his blood and his Order--an instinct natural andunconscious with him as the instinct by which he drove his breath.

"You are a fine soldier," said Cigarette musingly; "such men are notweak."

"Why? We are only strong as tigers are strong--just the strength ofthe talon and fang. I do not know. I was weak as water once; I may beagain, if--if----"

He scarcely knew that he was speaking aloud; he had forgotten her! Hiswhole heart seemed burned as with fire by the memory of that one faceso familiar, so well loved, yet from which he must shrink as thoughsome cowardly sin were between them. The wretchedness on him seemedmore than he could bear; to know that this man was so near that thesound of his voice raised could summon him, yet that he must remain asdead to him--remain as one dead after a craven and treacherous guilt.

He turned suddenly, almost violently, upon Cigarette.

"You have surprised my folly from me; you know my secret so far; butyou are too brave to betray me, you are too generous to tell of this?I can trust you to be silent?"

"Monsieur, that question from one soldier of France to another isinsult. We are not dastards!"

There was a certain grave reproach that mingled with the indignantscorn of the answer, and showed that her own heart was wounded by thedoubt, as well as her military pride by the aspersion. Even amid theconflict of pain at war in him he felt that, and hastened to sootheit.

"Forgive me, my child; I should not have wronged you with thequestion. It is needless, I know. Men can trust you to the death, theysay."

"To the death--yes."

The answer was thoughtful, dreamy, almost sad, for Cigarette. Histhoughts were too far from her in their tumult of awakened memories tonote the tone as he went rapidly on:

"You have ingenuity, compassion, tact; you have power here, too, inyour way. For the love of Heaven get me sent out on some duty beforedawn! There is Biribi's murder to be avenged--would they give theerrand to me?"

She thought a moment.

"We will see," she said curtly. "I think I can do it. But go back, oryou will be missed. I will come to you soon."

She left him, then, rapidly; drawing her hand quickly out of the claspof his.

Cigarette felt her heart aching to its core for the sorrow of this manwho was nothing to her. He did not know what she had done for him inhis suffering and delirium; he did not know how she had watched himall that night through, when she was weary, and bruised, and thirstingfor sleep; he did not know; he held her hand as one comrade another's,and never looked to see if her eyes were blue or were black, werelaughing or tear-laden. And yet she felt pain in his pain; she wasalways giving her life to his service. Many besides the little Friendof the Flag beat back as folly the noblest and purest thing in them.

Cecil mechanically returned to the fire at which the men of his tribewere cooking their welcome supper, and sat down near them; rejecting,with a gesture, the most savory portion which, with their customarylove and care for him, they were careful to select and bring to him.There had never been a time when they had found him fail to preferthem to himself, or fail to do them kindly service, if of such he hada chance; and they returned it with all that rough and silentattachment that can be so strong and so stanch in lives that may beblack with crime or red with slaughter.

He sat like a man in a dream, while the loosened tongues of the menran noisily on a hundred themes as they chaffed each other, exchangeda fire of bivouac jokes more racy than decorous, and gave themselvesto the enjoyment of their rude meal, that had to them that savor whichlong hunger alone can give. Their voices came dull on his ear; theruddy warmth of the fire was obscured to his sight; the din, thelaughter, the stir all over the great camp, at the hour of dinner werelost on him. He was insensible to everything except the innumerablememories that thronged upon him, and the aching longing that filledhis heart with the sight of the friend of his youth.

"He said once that he would take my hand before all the world always,come what would," he thought. "Would he take it now, I wonder? Yes; henever believed against me."

And, as he thought, the same anguish of desire that had before smittenhim to stand once more guiltless in the presence of men, and once morebear, untarnished, the name of his race and the honor of his fathers,shook him now as strong winds shake a tree that yet is fast rooted atits base, though it sway a while beneath the storm.

"How weak I am!" he thought bitterly. "What does it matter? Life is soshort, one is a coward indeed to fret over it. I cannot undo what Idid. I cannot, if I could. To betray him now! God! not for a kingdom,if I had the chance! Besides, she may live still; and, even were shedead, to tarnish her name to clear my own would be a scoundrel'sbaseness--baseness that would fail as it merited; for who could bebrought to believe me now?"

The thoughts unformed drifted through his mind, half dulled, halfsharpened by the deadly pain, and the rush of old brotherly love thathad arisen in him as he had seen the face of his friend beside thewatch-fire of the French bivouac. It was hard; it was cruelly hard; hehad, after a long and severe conflict, brought himself intocontentment with his lot, and taught himself oblivion of the past, andinterest in the present, by active duties and firm resolve; he hadvanquished all the habits, controlled most of the weaknesses, andbanished nearly all the frailties and indulgences of his temperamentin the long ordeal of African warfare. It was cruelly hard that nowwhen he had obtained serenity, and more than half attainedforgetfulness, these two--her face and his--must come before him; oneto recall the past, the other to embitter the future!

As he sat with his head bent down and his forehead leaning on his arm,while the hard biscuit that served for a plate stood unnoticed besidehim, with the food that the soldiers had placed on it, he did not hearCigarette's step till she touched him on the arm. Then he looked up;her eyes were looking on him with a tender, earnest pity.

"Hark! I have done it," she said gently. "But it will be an errandvery close to death that you must go on--"

He raised himself erect, eagerly.

"No matter that! Ah, mademoiselle, how I thank you!"

"Chut! I am no Paris demoiselle!" said Cigarette, with a dash of herold acrimony. "Ceremony in a camp--pouf! You must have been a courtchamberlain once, weren't you? Well, I have done it. Your officerswere talking yonder of a delicate business; they were uncertain whobest to employ. I put in my speech--it was dead against militaryetiquette, but I did it. I said to M. le General: 'You want the bestrider, the most silent tongue, and the surest steel in the squadrons?Take Bel-a-faire-peur, then.' 'Who is that?' asked the general; hewould have sent out of camp anybody but Cigarette for theinterruption. 'Mon General,' said I, 'the Arabs asked that, too, theother day, at Zaraila.' 'What!' he cried, 'the man Victor--who heldthe ground with his Chasseurs? I know--a fine soldier. M. le Colonel,shall we send him?' The Black Hawk had scowled thunder on you; hehates you more still since that affair of Zaraila, especially becausethe general has reported your conduct with such praise that theycannot help but promote you. Well, he had looked thunder, but now helaughed. 'Yes, mon General,' he answered him, 'take him, if you like.It is fifty to one whoever goes on that business will not come backalive, and you will rid me of the most insolent fine gentleman in mysquadrons.' The general hardly heard him; he was deep in thought; buthe asked a good deal about you from the Hawk, and Chateauroy spoke foryour fitness for the errand they are going to send you on, verytruthfully, for a wonder. I don't know why; but he wants you to besent, I think; most likely that you may be cut to pieces. And so theywill send for you in a minute. I have done it as you wished."

There was something of her old brusquerie and recklessness in theclosing sentences; but it had not her customary debonair lightness.She knew too well that the chances were as a hundred to one that hewould never return alive from this service on which he had entreatedto be dispatched. Cecil grasped both her hands in his with warmgratitude, that was still, like the touch of his hands, the gratitudeof comrade to comrade, not of man to woman.

"Oh! I am a true friend," said the Little One, somewhat pettishly. Shewould have preferred another epithet. "If a man wants to get shot as avery great favor, I always let him pleasure himself. Give a man hisown way, if you wish to be kind to him. You are children, all of you,nothing but children, and if the toy that pleases you best is death,why--you must have it. Nothing else would content you. I know you. Youalways want what flies from you, and are tired of what lies to yourhand. That is always a man."

"And a woman, too, is it not?"

Cigarette shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, I dare say! We love what is new--what is strange. We are humming-tops; we will only spin when we are fresh wound up with a string toour liking."

"Make an exception of yourself, my child. You are always ready to do agood action, and never tire of that. From my heart I thank you. I wishto Heaven I could prove it better."

She drew her hands away from him.

"A great thing I have done, certainly! Got you permission to go andthrow a cartel at old King Death; that is all! There! That is yoursummons."

The orderly approached, and brought the bidding of the general incommand of the Cavalry for Cecil to render himself at once to hispresence. These things brook no second's delay in obedience; he wentwith a quick adieu to Cigarette, and the little Friend of the Flag wasleft in his vacant place beside the fire.

And there was a pang at her heart.

"Ten to one he goes to his death," she thought. But Cigarette, littlemischief-maker though she was, could reach very high in one thing; shecould reach a love that was unselfish, and one that was heroic.

A few moments, and Cecil returned.

"Rake," he said rapidly, in the French he habitually used, "saddle myhorse and your own. I am allowed to choose one of you to accompanyme."

Rake, in paradise, and the envied of every man in the squadron, turnedto his work--with him a task of scarce more than a second; and Cecilapproached his little Friend of the Flag.

"My child, I cannot attempt to thank you. But for you, I should havebeen tempted to send my lance through my own heart."

"Keep its lunge for the Arbicos, mon ami," said Cigarette brusquely--the more brusquely because that new and bitter pang was on her. "Asfor me, I want no thanks."

"No; you are too generous. But not the less do I wish I could renderthem more worthily than by words. If I live, I will try; if not, keepthis in my memory. It is the only thing I have."

He put into her hand the ring she had seen in the little bon-bon box;a ring of his mother's that he had saved when he had parted with allelse, and had put off his hand and into the box of Petite Reine's giftthe day he entered the Algerian army.

Cigarette flushed scarlet with passions he could not understand, andshe could not have disentangled.

"The ring of your mistress! Not for me, if I know it! Do you think Iwant to be paid?"

"The ring was my mother's," he answered her simply. "And I offer itonly as souvenir."

She lost all her color and all her fiery wrath; his grave and gentlecourtesy always strangely stilled and rebuked her; but she raised thering off the ground where she had flung it, and placed it back in hishand.

"If so, still less should you part with it. Keep it; it will bring youhappiness one day. As for me, I have done nothing!"

"You have done what I value the more for that noble disclaimer. May Ithank you thus, Little One?"

He stooped and kissed her; a kiss that the lips of a man will alwaysgive to the bright, youthful lips of a women, but a kiss, as she knewwell, without passion, even without tenderness in it.

With a sudden impetuous movement, with a shyness and a refusal thathad never been in her before, she wrested herself from him, her faceburning, her heart panting, and plunged away from him into the depthof the shadow; and he never sought to follow her, but threw himselfinto saddle as his gray was brought up. Another instant, and, armed tothe teeth, he rode out of the camp into the darkness of the silent,melancholy, lonely Arab night.

CHAPTER XXX.

SEUL AU MONDE.

The errand on which he went was one, as he was well aware, from whichit were a thousand chances to one that he ever issued alive.

It was to reach a distant branch of the Army of Occupation withdispatches for the chief in command there, and to do this he had topass through a fiercely hostile region, occupied by Arabs with whom nosort of peace had ever been made, the most savage as well as the mostpredatory of the wandering tribes. His knowledge of their tongue, andhis friendship with some men of their nation, would avail him nothinghere; for their fury against the Franks was intense, and it was saidthat all prisoners who had fallen into their hands had been put todeath with merciless barbarities. This might be true or not true; wildtales were common among Algerian campaigners; whichever it were, hethought little of it as he rode out on to the lonely plains. Everykind of hazardous adventure and every variety of peril had beenfamiliar with him in the African life; and now there were thoughts andmemories on him which deadened every recollection of merely physicalrisk.

"We must ride as hard and as fast as we can, and as silently," werethe only words he exchanged with Rake, as he loosened his gray to agallop.

"All right, sir," answered the trooper, whose warm blood was dancing,and whose blue eyes were alive like fire with delight. That he hadbeen absent on a far-away foraging raid on the day of Zaraila had beennothing short of agony to Rake, and the choice made of him for thisduty was to him a gift of paradise. He loved fighting for fighting'ssake; and to be beside Cecil was the greatest happiness life held forhim.

They had two hundred miles to traverse, and had received only thecommand he had passed to Rake, to ride "hard, fast, and silently." Tothe hero of Zaraila the general had felt too much soldierly sympathyto add the superfluous injunction to do his uttermost to carry safelyand successfully to their destination the papers that were placed inhis care. He knew well that the errand would be done, or the Chasseurwould be dead.

It was just nightfall; the after-glow had faded only a few momentsbefore. Giving their horses, which they were to change once, ten hoursfor the distance, and two for bait and for rest, he reckoned that theywould reach the camp before the noon of the coming day, as the beasts,fresh and fast in the camp, flew like greyhounds beneath them.

Another night ride that they had ridden together came to the minds ofboth; but they spoke not a word as they swept on, their sabers shakenloose in their sheaths, their lances well gripped, and the pistolswith which they had been supplied sprung in their belts, ready forinstant action if a call should come for it. Every rood of the way wasas full of unseen danger as if laid over mines. They might pass insafety; they might any moment be cut down by ten score against two.From every hanging scarp of rugged rock a storm of musket-balls mightpour; from every screen of wild-fig foliage a shower of lances mightwhistle through the air; from every darkling grove of fir trees anArab band might spring and swoop on them; but the knowledge scarcelyrecurred to the one save to make him shake his sword more loose forquick disengagement, and only made the sunny blue eyes of the othersparkle with a vivid and longing zest.

The night grew very chill as it wore on; the north wind rose, rushingagainst them with a force and icy touch that seemed to freeze theirbones to the marrow after the heat of the day and the sun that hadscorched them so long. There was no regular road; they went across thecountry, their way sometimes leading over level land, over which theyswept like lightning, great plains succeeding one another withwearisome monotony; sometimes on the contrary, lying through ravines,and defiles, and gloomy woods, and broken, hilly spaces, where rent,bare rocks were thrown on one another in gigantic confusion, and thefantastic shapes of the wild fig and the dwarf palm gathered a hideousgrotesqueness in the darkness. For there was no moon, and the starswere often hidden by the storm-rack of leaden clouds that drifted overthe sky; and the only sound they heard was the cry of the jackal, orthe shriek of the night bird, and now and then the sound of shallowwater-courses, where the parched beds of hidden brooks had been filledby the autumnal rain.

The first five-and-twenty miles passed without interruption, and thehorses lay well and warmly to their work. They halted to rest and baitthe beasts in a rocky hollow, sheltered from the blasts of the bise,and green with short, sweet grass, sprung up afresh after the summerdrought.

"Do you ever think of him, sir?" said Rake softly, with a lingeringlove in his voice, as he stroked the grays and tethered them.

"Of whom?"

"Of the King, sir. If he's alive, he's getting a rare old horse now."

"Think of him! I wish I did not, Rake."

"Wouldn't you like to see him agen, sir?"

"What folly to ask! You know--"

"Yes, sir, I know," said Rake slowly. "And I know--leastways I pickedit out of a old paper--that your elder brother died, sir, like the oldlord, and Mr. Berk's got the title."

Rake had longed and pined for an opportunity to dare say this thingwhich he had learned, and which he could not tell whether or no Cecilknew likewise. His eyes looked with straining eagerness through thegloom into his master's; he was uncertain how his words would betaken. To his bitter disappointment, Cecil's face showed no change, nowonder.

"I have heard that," he said calmly--as calmly as though the news hadno bearing on his fortunes, but was some stranger's history.

"Well, sir, but he ain't the lord!" pleaded Rake passionately. "Hewon't never be while you're living, sir!"

"Oh, yes, he is! I am dead, you know."

"But he won't, sir!" reiterated Rake. "You're Lord Royallieu if everthere was a Lord Royallieu, and if ever there will be one."

"You mistake. An outlaw has no civil rights, and can claim none."

The man looked very wistfully at him; all these years through he hadnever learned why his master was thus "dead" in Africa, and he had tooloyal a love and faith ever to ask, or ever to doubt but that Cecilwas the wronged and not the wrong-doer.

"You ain't a outlaw, sir," he muttered. "You could take the title, ifyou would."

"Oh, no! I left England under a criminal charge. I should have todisprove that before I could inherit."

Rake crushed bitter oaths into muttered words as he heard. "You coulddisprove it, sir, of course, right and away, if you chose."

"No; or I should not have come here. Let us leave the subject. It wassettled long ago. My brother is Lord Royallieu. I would not disturbhim, if I had the power, and I have not it. Look, the horses aretaking well to their feed."

Rake asked him no more. He had never had a harsh word from Cecil intheir lives; but he knew him too well, for all that, to venture topress on him a question thus firmly put aside. But his heart achedsorely for his master; he would so gladly have seen "the king amonghis own again," and would have striven for the restoration asstrenuously as ever a Cavalier strove for the White Rose; and he satin silence, perplexed and ill satisfied, under the shelter of therock, with the great, dim, desolate African landscape stretchingbefore him, with here and there a gleam of light upon it when the windswept the clouds apart. His volatile speech was chilled, and hisbuoyant spirits were checked. That Cecil was justly outlawed he wouldhave thought it the foulest treason to believe for one instant; yet hefelt that he might as soon seek to wrench up the great stones abovehim from their base as seek to change the resolution of this man, whomhe had once known pliant as a reed and careless as a child.

They were before long in saddle again and off, the country growingwilder at each stride the horses took.

"It is all alive with Arabs for the next ten leagues," said Cecil, ashe settled himself in his saddle. "They have come northward and beensweeping the country like a locust-swarm, and we shall blunder on someof them sooner or later. If they cut me down, don't wait; but slash mypouch loose and ride off with it."

"All right, sir," said Rake obediently; but he thought to himself,"Leave you alone with them demons? Damn me if I will!"

And away they went once more, in speed and in silence, the darkness offull night closing in on them, the skies being black with the heavydrift of rising storm-clouds.

Meanwhile Cigarette was feasting with the officers of the regiment.The dinner was the best that the camp-scullions could furnish in honorof the two or three illustrious tourists who were on a visit to theheadquarters of the Algerian Army; and the Little One, the heroine ofZaraila, and the toast of every mess throughout Algeria, was asindispensable as the champagnes.

Not that she was altogether herself to-night; she was feverish, shewas bitter, she was full of stinging ironies; but that deliciousgayety, like a kitten's play, was gone from her, and its place, forthe first time in her life was supplied by unreal and hecticexcitation. In truth, while she laughed, and coquetted, and fencedwith the bright two-edged blade of her wit, and tossed down the winesinto her little throat like a trooper, she was thinking nothing at allof what was around her, and very little of what she said or she did.She was thinking of the starless night out yonder, of the bleak, aridcountry, of the great, dim, measureless plains; of one who was passingthrough them all, and one who might never return.

It was the first time that the absent had ever troubled her present;it was the first time that ever this foolish, senseless, haunting,unconquerable fear for another had approached her: fear--she had neverknown it for herself, why should she feel it now for him--a man whoselips had touched her own as lightly, as indifferently, as they mighthave touched the leaves of a rose or the curls of a dog!

She felt her face burn with the flash of a keen, unbearable passionateshame. Men by the score had wooed her love, to be flouted with theinsouciant mischief of her coquetry, and forgotten to-morrow if theywere shot to-day; and now he--he whose careless, calm caress wouldmake her heart vibrate and her limbs tremble with an emotion she hadnever known--he valued her love so little that he never even knew thathe had roused it! To the proud young warrior of France a greaterdegradation, a deadlier humiliation, than this could not have come.

Yet she was true as steel to him; true with the strong and loyalfealty that is inborn with such natures as hers. To have betrayed whathe had trusted to her, because she was neglected and wounded by him,would have been a feminine baseness of which the soldier-like soul ofCigarette would have been totally incapable. Her revenge might befierce, and rapid, and sure, like the revenge of a soldier; but itcould never be stealing and traitorous, and never like the revenge ofa woman.

Not a word escaped her that could have given a clew to the secret withwhich he had involuntarily weighted her; she only studied withinterest and keenness the face and the words of this man whom he hadloved, and from whom he had fled as criminals flee from theiraccusers.

"What is your name?" she asked him curtly, in one of the pauses of theamorous and witty nonsense that circulated in the tent in which theofficers of Chasseurs were entertaining him.

"Well--some call me Seraph."

"Ah! you have petite names, then, in Albion? I should have though shewas too somber and too stiff for them. Besides?"

"Lyonnesse."

"What a droll name! What are you?"

"A soldier."

"Good! What grade?"

"A Colonel of Guards."

Cigarette gave a little whistle to herself; she remembered that aMarshal of France had once said of a certain Chasseur, "He has theseat of the English Guards."

"My pretty catechist, M. le Duc does not tell you his title," criedone of the officers.

Cigarette interrupted him with a toss of her head.

"Ouf! Titles are nothing to me. I am a child of the People. So you area Duke, are you, M. le Seraph? Well, that is not much, to my thinking.Bah! there is Fialin made a Duke in Paris, and there are aristocratshere wearing privates' uniforms, and littering down their own horses.Bah! Have you that sort of thing in Albion?"

"Attorneys throned on high, and gentlemen glad to sweep crossings? Oh,yes!" laughed her interlocutor. "But you speak of aristocrats in yourranks--that reminds me. Have you not in this corps a soldier calledLouis Victor?"

He had turned as he spoke to one of the officers, who answered him inthe affirmative; while Cigarette listened with all her curiosity andall her interest, that needed a deeper name, heightened and tight-strung.

"A fine fellow," continued the Chef d'Escadron to whom he hadappealed. "He behaved magnificently the other day at Zaraila; he mustbe distinguished for it. He is just sent on a perilous errand, butthough so quiet he is a croc-mitaine, and woe to the Arabs who slayhim! Are you acquainted with him?"

"Not in the least. But I wished to hear all I could of him. I havebeen told he seems above his present position. Is it so?"

"Likely enough, monsieur; he seems a gentleman. But then we have manygentlemen in the ranks, and we can make no difference for that.Cigarette can tell you more of him; she used to complain that he bowedlike a Court chamberlain."

"Oh, ha!--I did!" cried Cigarette, stung into instant irony becausepained and irritated by being appealed to on the subject. "And ofcourse, when so many of his officers have the manners of Pyreneanbears, it is a little awkward for him to bring us the manner of aPalace!"

Which effectually chastised the Chef d'Escadron, who was one of thosewho had a ton of the roughest manners, and piqued himself on hispowers of fence much more than on his habits of delicacy.

"Has this Victor any history?" asked the English Duke.

"He has written one with his sword; a fine one," said Cigarettecurtly. "We are not given here to care much about any other."

"Quite right; I asked because a friend of mine who had seen hiscarvings wished to serve him, if it were possible; and--"

"Ho! That is Milady, is suppose!" Cigarette's eyes flashed fireinstantly, in wrath and suspicion. "What did she tell you about him?"

"I am ignorant of whom you speak?" he answered, with something ofsurprise and annoyance.

"Are you?" said Cigarette, in derision. "I doubt that. Of whom shouldI speak but of her? Bah? She insulted him, she offered him gold, shesent my men the spoils of her table, as if they were paupers, and hethinks it all divine because it is done by Mme. la Princesse Coronad'Amague! Bah! when he was delirious, the other night, he could babbleof nothing but of her--of her--of her!"

The jealous, fiery impatience in her vanquished every other thought;she was a child in much, she was untutored in all; she had no thoughtthat by the scornful vituperation of "Milady" she could either harmCecil or betray herself. But she was amazed to see the English guestchange color with a haughty anger that he strove to subdue as he halfrose and answered her with an accent in his voice that reminded her--she knew not why--of Bel-a-faire-peur and of Marquise.

"Mme. la Princess Corona d'Amague is my sister; why do you venture tocouple the name of this Chasseur with hers?"

Cigarette sprang to her feet, vivacious, imperious, reckless, dared toanything by the mere fact of being publicly arraigned.

"Pardieu! Is it insult to couple the silver pheasant with the Eaglesof France?--a pretty idea, truly! So she is your sister, is she?Milady? Well, then, tell her from me to think twice before sheoutrages a soldier with 'patronage'; and tell her, too, that had Ibeen he I would have ground my ivory toys into powder before I wouldhave let them become the playthings of a grande dame who tendered megold for them!"

The Englishman looked at her with astonishment that was mingled with avivid sense of intense annoyance and irritated pride, that the name hecherished closest should be thus brought in, at a camp dinner, on thelips of a vivandiere and in connection with a trooper of Chasseurs.

"I do not understand your indignation, mademoiselle," he said, with animpatient stroke to his beard. "There is no occasion for it. Mme.Corona d'Amague, my sister," he continued, to the officers present,"became accidentally acquainted with the skill at sculpture of thisCorporal of yours; he appeared to her a man of much refinement andgood breeding. She chanced to name him to me, and feeling some pity--"

"M. le Duc!" cried the ringing voice of Cigarette, loud and startlingas a bugle-note, while she stood like a little lioness, flushed withthe draughts of champagne and with the warmth of wrath at once jealousand generous, "keep your compassion until it is asked of you. Nosoldier of France needs it; that I promise you. I know this man thatyou talk of 'pitying.' Well, I saw him at Zaraila three weeks ago; hehad drawn up his men to die with them rather than surrender and yieldup the guidon; I dragged him half dead, when the field was won, fromunder his horse, and his first conscious act was to give the drinkthat I brought him to a wretch who had thieved from him. Our life hereis hell upon earth to such as he, yet none ever heard a lament wrungout of him; he is gone to the chances of death to-night as most men goto their mistresses' kisses; he is a soldier Napoleon would havehonored. Such a one is not to have the patronage of a Milady Corona,nor the pity of a stranger of England. Let the first respect him; letthe last imitate him!"

And Cigarette, having pronounced her defense and her eulogy with thevibrating eloquence of some orator from a tribune, threw her champagnegoblet down with a crash, and, breaking through the arms outstretchedto detain her, forced her way out despite them, and left her hostsalone in their lighted tent.

"C'est Cigarette!" said the Chef d'Escadron, with a shrug of hisshoulders, as of one who explained, by that sentence, a whole world ofirreclaimable eccentricities.

"A strange little Amazon!" said their guest. "Is she in love with thisVictor, that I have offended her so much with his name?"

The Major shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know that, monsieur," answered one. "She will defend a man inhis absence, and rate him to his face most soundly. Cigarette whirlsabout like a little paper windmill, just as the breeze blows; but, asthe windmill never leaves its stick, so she is always constant to theTricolor."

Their guest said little more on the subject; in his own thoughts hewas bitterly resentful that, by the mention of this Chasseur'sfortunes, he should have brought in the name he loved so well--thepurest, fairest, haughtiest name in Europe--into a discussion with avivandiere at a camp dinner.

Chateauroy, throughout, had said nothing; he had listened in silence,the darkness lowering still more heavily upon his swarthy features;only now he opened his lips for a few brief words:

"Mon cher Duc, tell Madame not to waste the rare balm of her pity. Thefellow you inquire for was an outcast and an outlaw when he came tous. He fights well--it is often a blackguard's virtue!"

His guest nodded and changed the subject; his impatience and aversionat the introduction of his sister's name into the discussion made himdrop the theme unpursued, and let it die out forgotten.

Venetia Corona associated with an Algerian trooper! If Cigarette hadbeen of his own sex he could have dashed the white teeth down herthroat for having spoken of the two in one breath.

And as, later on, he stretched his gallant limbs out on his narrowcamp pallet, tired with a long day in saddle under the hot Africansun, the Seraph fell asleep with his right arm under his handsomegolden head, and thought no more of this unknown French trooper.

But Cigarette remained wakeful.

She lay curled up in the straw against her pet horse, Etoile Filante,with her head on the beast's glossy flank and her hand among his mane.She often slept thus in camp, and the horse would lie still andcramped for hours rather than awaken her, or, if he rose, would takethe most watchful heed to leave unharmed the slender limbs, theflushed cheeks, the frank, fair brow of the sleeper beneath him, thatone stroke of his hoof could have stamped out into a bruised andshapeless mass.

To-night Etoile Filante slept, and his mistress was awake--wide-awake,with her eyes looking out into the darkness beyond, with a passionatemist of unshed tears in them, and her mouth quivering with pain andwith wrath. The vehement excitation had not died away in her, butthere had come with it a dull, spiritless, aching depression. It hadroused her to fury to hear the reference to her rival spoken--of thataristocrat whose name had been on Cecil's lips when he had beendelirious. She had kept his secret loyally, she had defended himvehemently; there was something that touched her to the core in thethought of the love with which he had recognized this friend who, inignorance, spoke of him as of some unknown French soldier. She couldnot tell what the history was, but she could divine nearly enough tofeel its pathos and its pain. She had known, in her short life, moreof men and of their passions and of their fortunes than many lives ofhalf a century in length can ever do; she could guess, nearly enoughto be wounded with its sorrow, the past which had exiled the man whohad kept by him his lost mother's ring as the sole relic of years towhich he was dead so utterly as though he were lying in his coffin. Nomatter what the precise reason was--women, or debt, or accident, orruin--these two, who had been familiar comrades, were now as strangersto each other; the one slumbered in ignorance near her, the other hadgone out to the close peril of death, lest the eyes of his friendrecognize his face and read his secret. It troubled her, it weighed onher, it smote her with a pang. It might be that now, even now--thisvery moment, while her gaze watched the dusky shadows of the nightchase one another along the dreary plains--a shot might have struckdown this life that had been stripped of name and fame and country;even now all might be over!

And Cigarette felt a cold, sickly shudder seize her that never before,at death or danger, had chilled the warm, swift current of her brightFrench blood. In bitter scorn at herself, she muttered hot oathsbetween her pretty teeth.

Mere de Dieu! he had touched her lips as carelessly as her own kisswould have touched the rose-bud, waxen petals of a cluster ofoleander-blossoms; and she cared for him still!

While the Seraph slept dreamlessly, with the tents of the French camparound him, and the sleepless eyes of Cigarette watched afar off thedim, distant forms of the vedettes as they circled slowly round attheir outpost duty--eight leagues off, through a vast desert of shadowand silence, the two horsemen swept swiftly on. Not a word had passedbetween them; they rode close together in unbroken stillness; theywere scarcely visible to each other for there was no moon, and storm-clouds obscured the skies. Now and then their horses' hoofs struckfire from a flint-stone, and the flash sparkled through the darkness;often not even the sound of their gallop was audible on the gray, dry,loose soil.

Every rood of the road was sown thick with peril. No frowning ledge ofrock, with pine-roots in its clefts, but might serve as the barricadebehind which some foe lurked; no knot of cypress-shrubs, black even onthat black sheet of shadow, but might be pierced with the steel tubesof leveled, waiting muskets.

Pillaging, burning, devastating wherever they could, in what was tothem a holy war of resistance to the infidel and the invader, thepredatory tribes had broken out into a revolt which the rout ofZaraila, heavy blow though it had been to them, had by no means ended.They were still in arms, infesting the country everywhere southward;defying regular pursuit, impervious to regular attacks; carrying onthe harassing guerilla warfare at which they were such adepts. Andcausing thus to their Frankish foe more irritation and more loss thandecisive engagements would have produced. They feared nothing, hadnothing to lose, and could subsist almost upon nothing. They might bedriven into the desert, they might even be exterminated after longpursuit; but they would never be vanquished. And they were scatterednow far and wide over the country; every cave might shelter, everyravine might inclose them; they appeared here, they appeared there;they swooped down on a convoy, they carried sword and flame into asettlement, they darted like a flight of hawks upon a foraging party,they picked off any vedette, as he wheeled his horse round in themoonlight; and every yard of the sixty miles which the two graychargers of the Chasseurs d'Afrique must cover ere their service wasdone was as rife with death as though its course lay over the volcanicline of an earthquake or a hollow, mined and sprung.

They had reached the center of the plain when the sound they had longlooked for rang on their ears, piercing the heavy, breathlessstillness of the night. It was the Allah-il-Allah of their foes, thewar-cry of the Moslem. Out of the gloom--whether from long pursuit orsome near hiding-place they could not tell--there broke suddenly uponthem the fury of an Arab onslaught. In the darkness all they could seewere the flash of steel, the flame of fierce eyes against their own,the white steam of smoking horses, the spray of froth flung off thesnorting nostrils, the rapid glitter of the curved flissas--whethertwo, or twenty, or twice a hundred were upon them they could not know--they never did know. All of which they were conscious was that in aninstant, from the tranquil melancholy around them of the great, dim,naked space, they were plunged into the din, the fury, the heat, theclose, crushing, horrible entanglement of conflict, without the powerto perceive or to number their foes, and only able to follow thesheer, simple instincts of attack and of defense. All they weresensible of was one of those confused moments, deafening, blinding,filled with violence and rage and din--an eternity in semblance, asecond in duration--that can never be traced, never be recalled; yetin whose feverish excitement men do that which, in their calmer hours,would look to them a fable of some Amadis of Gaul.

How they were attacked, how they resisted, how they struck, how theywere encompassed, how they thrust back those who were hurled on themin the black night, with the north sea-wind like ice upon their faces,and the loose African soil drifting up in clouds of sand around them,they could never have told. Nor how they strained free from the armedring that circled them, and beat aside the shafts of lances and theblades of swords, and forced their chargers breast to breast againstthe fence of steel and through the tempest of rage, and blows, andshouts, and wind, and driven sand, cut their way through the foe whosevery face they scarce could see, and plunged away into the shadowsacross the desolation of the plain, pursued, whether by one or by thethousand they could not guess; for the gallop was noiseless on thepowdered soil, and the Arab yell of baffled passion and slaughterouslust was half drowned in the rising of the wind-storm. Had it beenday, they would have seen their passage across the level table-landtraced by a crimson stream upon the sand, in which the blood of Frankand Arab blended equally.

As it was, they dashed headlong down through the darkness that grewyet denser and blacker as the storm rose. For miles the ground waslevel before them, and they had only to let the half-maddened horses,that had as by a miracle escaped all injury, rush on at their own willthrough the whirl of the wind that drove the dust upward in spiralcolumns and brought icy breaths of the north over the sear, sunburned,southern wastes.

For a long space they had no sense but that of rapid, ceaseless motionthrough the thick gloom and against the pressure of the violentblasts. The speed of their gallop and the strength of the currents ofair were like some narcotic that drowned and that dizzied perception.In the intense darkness neither could see, neither hear, the other;the instinct of the beasts kept them together, but no word could beheard above the roar of the storm, and no light broke the somber veilof shadow through which they passed as fast as leopards course throughthe night. The first faint streak of dawn grew gray in the east whenCecil felt his charger stagger and sway beneath him, and halt, wornout and quivering in every sinew with fatigue. He threw himself offthe animal in time to save himself from falling with it as it reeledand sank to the ground.

"Massena cannot stir another yard," he said. "Do you think they followus still?"

There was no reply.

He strained his sight to pierce the darkness, but he could distinguishnothing; the gloom was still too deep. He spoke more loudly; stillthere was no reply. Then he raised his voice in a shout; it rangthrough the silence, and, when it ceased, the silence reigned again.

A deadly chill came on him. How had he missed his comrade? They mustbe far apart, he knew, since no response was given to his summons; or--the alternative rose before him with a terrible foreboding.

That intense quiet had a repose as of death in it, a ghastlyloneliness that seemed filled with desolation. His horse was stretchedbefore him on the sand, powerless to rise and drag itself a roodonward, and fast expiring. From the plains around him not a soundcame, either of friend or foe. The consciousness that he was alone,that he had lost forever the only friend left to him, struck on himwith that conviction which so often foreruns the assurance ofcalamity. Without a moment's pause he plunged back in the direction hehad come, leaving the charger on the ground to pant its life out as itmust, and sought to feel his way along, so as to seek as best he couldthe companion he had deserted. He still could not see a rood beforehim, but he went on slowly, with some vague hope that he should erelong reach the man whom he knew death or the fatality of accidentalone would keep from his side. He could not feel or hear anythingthat gave him the slightest sign or clew to aid his search; he onlywandered farther from his horse, and risked falling afresh into thehands of his pursuers; he shouted again with all his strength, but hisown voice alone echoed over the plains, while his heart stood stillwith the same frozen dread that a man feels when, wrecked on somebarren shore, his cry for rescue rings back on his own ear over thewaste of waters.

The flicker of the dawn was growing lighter in the sky, and he couldsee dimly now, as in some winter day's dark twilight, though allaround him hung the leaden mist, with the wild winds drivingfuriously. It was with difficulty also that he kept his feet againsttheir force; but he was blown onward by their current, though beatenfrom side to side, and he still made his way forward. He had repassedthe ground already traversed by some hundred yards or more, whichseemed the length of many miles in the hurricane that was driving overthe earth and sky, when some outline still duskier than the duskyshadow caught his sight; it was the body of a horse, standing on guardover the fallen body of a man.

Another moment and he was beside them.

"My God! Are you hurt?"

He could see nothing but an indistinct and shapeless mass, withoutform or color to mark it out from the brooding gloom and from theleaden earth. But the voice he knew so well answered him with the oldlove and fealty in it; eager with fear for him.

"When did you miss me, sir? I didn't mean you to know; I held on aslong as I could; and when I couldn't no longer, I thought you was safenot to see I'd knocked over, so dark as it was."

Cecil hung over him, striving in vain through the shadows to read thetruth from the face on which he felt by instinct the seal of death wasset.

"I never meant you should know, sir. I meant just to drop behind anddie on the quiet. You see, sir, it was just this way; they hit me aswe forced through them. There's the lance-head in my loins now. Ipressed it in hard, and kept the blood from flowing, and thought Ishould hold out so till the sun rose. But I couldn't do it so long; Igot sick and faint after a while, and I knew well enough it was death.So I dropped down while I'd sense left to check the horse and get outof saddle in silence. I hoped you wouldn't miss me, in the darknessand the noise the wind was making; and you didn't hear me then, sir. Iwas glad."

His voice was checked in a quick, gasping breath; his only thought hadbeen to lie down and die in the solitude so that his master might besaved.

A great sob shook Cecil as he heard; no false hope came to him; hefelt that this man was lost to him forever, that this was the solerecompense which the cruelty of Africa would give to a fidelitypassing the fidelity of woman; these throes of dissolution the onlypayment with which fate would ever requite a loyalty that had held notravail weary, no exile pain, and no danger worthy counting, so longas they were encountered and endured in his own service.

"Don't take on about it, sir," whispered Rake, striving to raise hishead that he might strain his eyes better through the gloom to see hismaster's face. "It was sure to come some time; and I ain't in no pain--to speak of. Do leave me, Mr. Cecil--leave me, for God's sake, andsave yourself!"

"Did you leave me?"

The answer was very low, and his voice shook as he uttered it; butthrough the roar of the hurricane Rake heard it.

"That was different, sir," he said simply. "Let me lie here, and goyou on. It'll soon be over, and there's naught to be done."

"O God! is no help possible?"

"Don't take on, sir; it's no odds. I always was a scamp, and scampsdie game, you know. My life's been a rare spree, count it all and all;and it's a great, good thing, you see, sir, to go off quick like this.I might have been laid in hospital. If you'd only take the beast andride on, sir--"

"Hush! hush! Would you make me coward, or brute, or both?"

The words broke in an agony from him. The time had been when he hadbeen himself stretched in what he had thought was death, in just suchsilence, in just such solitude, upon the bare, baked earth, far frommen's aid, and near only to the hungry eyes of watching beasts ofprey. Then he had been very calm, and waited with indifference for theend; now his eyes swept over the remorseless wastes, that were growingfaintly visible under the coming dawn, with all the impatience, theterror, of despair. Death had smitten down many beside him; buoyantyouth and dauntless manhood he had seen a thousand times swept underthe great waves of war and lost forever, but it had an anguish for himhere that he would never have known had he felt his own life-bloodwell out over the sand. The whole existence of this man had beensacrificed for him, and its only reward was a thrust of a lance in amidnight fray--a grave in an alien soil.

His grief fell dully on ears half deafened already to the sounds ofthe living world. the exhaustion that follows on great loss of bloodwas upon the soldier who for the last half hour had lain there in thedarkness and the stillness, quietly waiting death, and not onceseeking even to raise his voice for succor lest the cry should reachand should imperil his master.

The morning had broken now, but the storm had not lulled. The northernwinds were sweeping over the plains in tenfold violence, and the rainsburst and poured, with the fury of water-spouts on the crust of theparched, cracked earth. Around them there was nothing heard or seenexcept the leaden, angry mists, tossed to and fro under the hurricane,and the white light of the coming day breaking lividly through theclouds. The world held no place of more utter desolation, moreunspeakable loneliness; and in its misery Cecil, flung down upon thesands beside him, could do nothing except--helpless to aid, andpowerless to save--watch the last breath grow feebler and feebler,until it faded out from the only life that had been faithful to him.

By the fitful gleams of day he could see the blood slowly ebbing outfrom the great gap where the lance-head was still bedded with itswooden shaft snapped in two; he could see the drooped head that he hadraised upon his knee, with the yellow, northern curls that no desertsuns had darkened; and Rake's eyes, smiling so brightly and so bravelystill, looked up from under their weary lids to his.

"I'd never let you take my hand before, sir; just take it once now--will you?--while I can see you still."

Their hands met as he asked it, and held each other close and long;all the loyal service of the one life, and all the speechlessgratitude of the other, told better than by all words in that onefarewell.

A light that was not from the stormy dusky morning shone over thesoldier's face.

"Time was, sir," he said, with a smile, "when I need to think as how,some day or another, when I should have done something great andgrand, and you was back among your own again, and they here had givenme the Cross, I'd have asked you to have done that before all theArmy, and just to have said to 'em, if so you liked, 'He was a scamp,and he wasn't thought good for naught; but he kept true to me, and yousee it made him go straight, and I aren't ashamed to call him myfriend.' I used to think that, sir, though 'twas silly, perhaps. Butit's best as it is--a deal best, no doubt. If you was only back safein camp---"

"O God! cease! I am not worthy one thought of love like yours."

"Yes, you are, sir--leastways, you was to me. When you took pity onme, it was just a toss-up if I didn't go right to the gallows. Don'tgrieve that way, Mr. Cecil. If I could just have seen you home againin your place, I should have been glad--that's all. You'll go back oneday, sir; when you do, tell the King I ain't never forgot him."

His voice grew faint as the last sentence stole from his lips; he layquite still, his head leaned back against his mater; and the day came,with the north winds driving over the plains and the gray mists tossedby them to and fro like smoke.

There was a long silence, a pause in which the windstorm ceased, andthe clouds of the loosed sands sunk. Alone, with the wastes stretchingaround them, were the living and the dying man, with the horsestanding motionless beside them, and, above, the gloom of the sullensky. No aid was possible; they could but wait, in the stupefaction ofdespair, for the end of all to come.

In that awful stillness, in that sudden lull in the madness of thehurricane, death had a horror which it never wore in the riot of thebattlefield, in the intoxication of the slaughter. There was no pityin earth or heaven; the hard, hot ground sucked down its fill ofblood; the icy air enwrapped them like a shroud.

The faithfulness of love, the strength of gratitude, were of no avail;the one perished in agony, the other was powerless to save.

In that momentary hush, as the winds sank low, the heavy eyes, halfsightless now, sought with their old wistful, doglike loyalty the faceto which so soon they would be blind forever.

"Would you tell me once, sir--now? I never asked--I never would havedone--but may be I might know in this last minute. You never sinnedthat sin you bear the charge on?"

"God is my witness, no."

The light, that was like sunlight, shone once more in the aching,wandering eyes.

"I knew, I knew! It was--"

Cecil bowed his head over him, lower and lower.

"Hush! He was but a child; and I--"

With a sudden and swift motion, as though new life were thrilling inhim, Rake raised himself erect, his arms stretched outward to theeast, where the young day was breaking.

"I knew, I knew! I never doubted. You will go back to your own someday, and men shall learn the truth--thank God! thank God!"

Then, with that light still on his face, his head fell backward; andwith one quick, brief sigh his life fled out forever.

The time passed on; the storm had risen afresh; the violence of thegusts blew yellow sheets of sand whirling over the plains. Alone, withthe dead one across his knees, Cecil sat motionless as though turnedto stone. His eyes were dry and fixed; but ever and again a great,tearless sob shook him from head to foot. The only life that linkedhim with the past, the only love that had suffered all things for hissake, were gone, crushed out as though they never had been, like someinsect trodden in the soil.

He had lost all consciousness, all memory, save of that lifeless thingwhich lay across his knees, like a felled tree, like a broken log,with the glimmer of the tempestuous day so chill and white upon theupturned face.

He was alone on earth; and the solitudes around him were not moredesolate than his own fate.

He was like a man numbed and stupefied by intense cold; his veinsseemed stagnant, and his sight could only see those features thatbecame so terribly serene, so fearfully unmoved with the dread calm ofdeath. Yet the old mechanical instincts of a soldier guided him still;he vaguely knew that his errand had to be done, must be done, let hisheart ache as it would, let him long as he might to lie down by theside of his only friend, and leave the torture of life to grow stillin him also for evermore.

Instinctively, he moved to carry out the duty trusted to him. Helooked east and west, north and south; there was nothing in sight thatcould bring him aid; there were only the dust clouds hurled in billowshither and thither by the bitter winds still blowing from the sea. Allthat could be done had to be done by himself alone. His own safetyhung on the swiftness of his flight; for aught he knew, at everymoment, out of the mist and the driven sheets of sand there might rushthe desert horses of his foes. But this memory was not with him; allhe thought of was that burden stretched across his limbs, which laiddown one hour here unwatched, would be the prey of the jackal and thevulture. He raised it reverently in his arms, and with long, laboriouseffort drew its weight up across the saddle of the charger which stoodpatiently waiting by, turning its docile eyes with a plaintive,wondering sadness on the body of the rider it had loved. Then hemounted himself; and with the head of his lost comrade borne up uponhis arm, and rested gently on his breast, he rode westward over thegreat plain to where his mission lay.

The horse paced slowly beneath the double load of dead and living; hewould not urge the creature faster on; every movement that shook thedrooping limbs, or jarred the repose of that last sleep, seemeddesecration. He passed the place where his own horse was stretched;the vultures were already there. He shuddered; and then pressed fasteron, as though the beasts and birds of prey would rob him of his burdenere he could give it sanctuary. And so he rode, mile after mile, overthe barren land, with no companion save the dead.

The winds blew fiercely in his teeth; the sand was in his eyes andhair; the way was long, and weary, and sown thick with danger; but heknew of nothing, felt and saw nothing save that one familiar face sostrangely changed and transfigured by that glory with which death hadtouched it.

CHAPTER XXXI.

"JE VOUS ACHETE VOTRE VIE."

Thus burdened, he made his way for over two leagues. The hurricanenever abated, and the blinding dust rose around him in great waves.The horse fell lame; he had to dismount, and move slowly and painfullyover the loose, heavy soil on foot, raising the drooping head of thelifeless rider. It was bitter, weary, cruel travail, of an intolerablelabor, of an intolerable pain.

Once or twice he grew sick and giddy, and lost for a moment allconsciousness; but he pressed onward, resolute not to yield and leavethe vultures, hovering aloft, their prey. He was still somewhatweakened by the wounds of Zaraila; he had been bruised and exhaustedby the skirmish of the past night; he was weary and heart-broken; buthe did not yield to his longing to sink down on the sands, and let hislife ebb out; he held patiently onward through the infinite misery ofthe passage. At last he drew near the caravanserai where he had beendirected to obtain a change of horses. It stood midway in the distancethat he had to traverse, and almost alone when the face of the countrychanged, and was more full of color, and more broken into rocky andirregular surfaces.

As a man walks in a dream, he led the sinking beast toward itsshelter, as its irregular corner towers became dimly perceptible tohim through the dizzy mists that had obscured his sight. By sheerinstinct he found his route straight toward the open arch of itsentrance-way, and into the square courtyard thronged with mules andcamels and horses; for the caravanserai stood on the only road thatled through that district to the south, and was the only house of callfor drovers, or shelter for travelers and artists of Europe who mightpass that way. The groups in the court paused in their converse and intheir occupations, and looked in awe at the gray charger with itsstrange burden, and the French Chasseur who came so blindly forwardlike a man feeling his passage through the dark. There was somethingin the sight that had a vague terror for them before they clearly sawwhat this thing was which was thus brought into their presence. Cecilmoved slowly on into their midst, his hand on the horse's rein; then agreat darkness covered his sight; he swayed to and fro, and fellsenseless on the gray stone of the paved court, while the muleteer andthe camel-drivers, the Kabyls and the French, who were mingled there,crowded around him in fear and in wonder. When consciousness returnedto him he was lying on a stone bench in the shadow of the wall, and athrong of lean, bronzed, eager faces about him in the midday sunlightwhich had broken through the windstorm.

Instantly he remembered all.

"Where is he?" he asked.

They knew he meant the dead man, and answered him in a hushed murmurof many voices. They had placed the body gently down within, in adarkened chamber.

A shiver passed over him; he stretched his hand out for water thatthey held to him.

"Saddle me a fresh horse; I have my work to do."

He knew that for no friendship, or grief, or suffering, or self-pitymight a soldier pause by the wayside while his errand was stillundone, his duty unfulfilled.

He drank the water thirstily; then, reeling slightly still, from theweakness that was still upon him, he rose, rejecting their offers ofaid. "Take me to him," he said simply. They understood him; there wereFrench soldiers among them, and they took him, without question orcomment, across the court to the little square stone cell within oneof the towers, where they had laid the corpse, with nothing to breakthe quiet and the solitude except the low, soft cooing of some dovesthat had their homes in its dark corners, and flew in and out atpleasure through the oval aperture that served as window.

He motioned them all back with his hand, and went into the gloom ofthe chamber alone. Not one among them followed.